What's Left In The Blood
by cantilatrix
Summary: Post-'The Long Night'. Dawn has broken on Winterfell. All the survivors have left now is each other.


Not for the first time in his life, as a sheer wall of bodies slams into the front line and sweeps him backwards, off his feet, clanging against the back of some knight's shield, Jaime wished he still had his right hand.

A thousand mouths snapping, each body impossible to tell from one to the other, pressing him upwards and he scrambles, finds purchase on the ground, in his fear finds himself trying to draw with his right hand before correcting and swinging his sword in his left hand down, into the thicket of flesh.

The firelight is behind him and it only barely lights the way. The wights almost seem to absorb the light rather than reflect it. The bodies are pressing on him and grabbing and tearing and he yells, swipes his metal hand into the crowd even though the effort spikes pain through his arm just so he has _space_ for a blissful half-second before it presses back in and he's swamped again. He swings his sword again, and again, and nothing seems to be happening. The blade catches and drags across a wight that tries to climb over the top of its brethren, above his head, and its entrails slop across his face and down his body. Gumming in his eye, sliding in his mouth. The taste is enough to make him gag, but he cannot stop, if he stops he dies, and he spits and coughs and yells and tries not to think that he's going to die here, he's not Jaime Lannister anymore, just some crippled man against a sea of destruction he cannot hope to hold back.

Behind him. Brienne, screaming. He turns to see her collapsing to the ground, swarmed by half a dozen of the dead, and his heart jumps to his throat and he surges forward and slices _in, in, in_, until Brienne can push off the last of them and yells with the effort of it and the world is _alight _with dragonfire, the unending rattle of a hundred thousand dead men's breath, and a stampede for the gates of Winterfell, _fall back, fall back, _stumbling over bodies and knowing that falling would mean everyone else trampling you in their fear and haste. They surge through the gates and Brienne holds back to ensure everyone's going where they should and, staring into hundreds of fearful faces, Jaime calls them_ to the walls, relieve the archers, draw, loose_, tries to inflect some martial authority into it where he feels only the certainty of their death. He looks down over the ramparts to see that they're climbing on top of each other, swarming upwards like vermin in a barrel, and he gasps, in, out, and stabs downwards as hard as he can, over and over until something grabs him from behind and threatens to push him over the wall and he's overcome, his sword arm trapped in against his chest, pushing against flesh that gives way but does not yield.

They fall away and Brienne is there, her eyes wild and frenzied, sliding from him to the next target, and he covers her back, _look out, _slamming his sword into yet another target trying to hit Brienne and feeling it stop fighting and moving to the next, to the next, to the next.

His defense of the walls is over almost as soon as he's begun it. There's nothing left to do once the dead are dropping to the courtyard but defend it, and all he can think of in the pressing mass of blood and mud and fire is to stay by Brienne, so he follows her and fights with her and slices into body after body after body as he and Brienne and Pod are slowly backed up into the walls of Winterfell and, dimly, in the part of his mind not given to the endless awful fighting, he knows they've lost. They're holding the wights off from one another, the bodies are piling at their feet, but they just keep _coming, _they're close to buried in the corpses they've made, and all he can feel anymore is the jarring of his sword against bone and all he can hear anymore are Brienne and Pod, grunting with exertion, gasping for breath.

A crashing, awful, screech.

A dragon with its throat torn open, blue-purple fire flaring from the wounds, descends into the courtyard.

And there's no way they can run, they're hemmed in entirely, and Brienne's grunts give way to exhausted screams as a jet of cold blue flame sweeps just past them and Jaime can feel that she's tiring as much as he is, neither of them are going to last much longer. They're dying here. He misses a swing and is knocked off his feet and Pod slams into the wight body-first with a yell, slices upwards, and Brienne steadies Jaime on his feet as somewhere near them, the dragon makes an awful, screaming _noise_-

That gives way to silence.

The wights before them drop to the ground.

There's no sound now but their gasping. The crackle of fire.

Jaime leans his back against the wall. He can feel his own sweat cooling, something viscous trickling on the back of his neck, bits and pieces of flesh stuck to his left hand, the aching weight of his right.

He can't bring himself to sheathe his sword. He stares at the bodies, uses the time to study the faces he'd previously not had time to look at. He's seen many corpses, but not ones where there's only skin stretched across bone, a hanging jaw, those awful blue eyes. Thousands and thousands of dead blue eyes.

Pod, beside him, drops to his knees. He's breathing like a horse after a joust, a gasp that seems to come from the neck, not the chest, all desperation, mud matting his hair to his face. He clutches his sword in his hand like a lifeline.

Jaime has to turn to look at Brienne. After all her cries during battle, it seems that she's reduced to silence. Her eyes are still open far too wide, some feral creature backed into a corner, chest heaving, and she's still got her sword in a fighting position.

He finds the words somewhere in his mouth, between the spit and blood and viscera.

"Brienne."

She doesn't answer. Her eyes are searching the courtyard for enemies. Jaime feels that old, warmingly familiar frustration, _come on, Brienne_, and it spurs him to hastily wipe and sheathe his sword and reach out to her, grab her by the arm hard. She tips her sword sideways, almost lunges, before catching herself as she looks at him properly, lowers her sword and stares at him.

"Brienne," he says, and his voice cracks with the effort. Something about saying it puts his mind back in place. "Crypt."

He can see that she's gathering herself, her oaths lining themselves up, and she gasps out, "Sansa," and she's climbing over the sliding bodies and on. Jaime thinks of his brother down there and the awful impossible possibility of him being down there with flat blue eyes and he almost vaults over the wall of bodies, stumbling and tripping and crashing across the courtyard in pursuit of Brienne, in pursuit of Tyrion.

The doors to the crypt are broken open. Brienne staggers to a halt before surging on, down into the darkness, calling out.

"Sansa?" she yells, and Jaime sprints after her, a second wind he didn't think he had left. There's an awful squeezing in his throat. Not after all of this. They cannot have lost the crypt. Not Tyrion.

Bodies litter the ground. Small crumpled children, women draped across tombs. And the corpses of long-dead bodies.

Jaime's yell is ripped from him.

"Tyrion?!"

A clatter from one side, and there he is, there he _is_, eyes wide and searching as he leads a small group of survivors from around a corner. Brienne clatters past them, to Sansa, but Jaime barely notices.

Tyrion looks Jaime over. He's gripping dragonglass in his hand so tight he's cutting himself with it. "Is it over?"

Jaime doesn't answer. He just collapses to the ground, drops his head on Tyrion's shoulder and holds him tight, hand clasped into Tyrion's hair, not letting go. Tyrion holds him just as tight. For a moment, he thinks Tyrion is crying, and he tries to gather himself up to comfort his brother before realising the shuddering, awful crying is _him_, the tears hot and stinging against cuts on his face, his chest heaving uncontrollably. He tries to answer and he _can't_, he's inhaling with shallower and shallower breaths, and he can hear he's making this awful shuddering moan that he can't stop but can bite down on, holds his tongue between his teeth and whimpers uncontrollably as Tyrion pulls back and stares at him in shock. He's never once cried in front of his brother. Not _once_. He wants to stop, he needs to stop or he's going to lose what little reputation he has left, and then he thinks of the wall of the dead emerging from the pitch darkness, a hundred thousand dead blue eyes, and he's dropping, head pressing against a blood-damp tomb, and he _can't breathe_ as the tears stream from his eyes and his sobs are choked off by his gasps for air. Tyrion's rubbing his back uselessly.

"Sh, shh, it's alright, it's alright," Tyrion says. He's using his light, gentle tone, the tone he uses with children. Jaime shudders and cries for far too long, minute after awful minute, and when it subsides and he can finally take a shaky, deep breath, Tyrion is still rubbing his back, watching him, waiting patiently. There are tears in his eyes too.

"It's over," Jaime forces out, and struggles to his feet.

He stands up and finds himself looking directly in Brienne's eyes, and almost collapses all over again. He doesn't want to think that she saw that, how weak he felt, he looked. Her eyes are wide and wet with blinked-back tears and it reminds him of nothing so much as her staring at him in the baths of Harrenhal as he recounted the death of Aerys. He tries to say something and she won't let him, just pulls him to the courtyard with a hand propping him up against her and he doesn't fight it as they walk up together, to the dawn.

They will be needed, soon, to help take a count of the dead and clear up the bodies scattering the hallways, but now's not the time. Tyrion tells them as such, dagger still clenched in his hand, pointing them to the castle as he stares at the devastation around them. Jaime can't find it in him to argue or ask what Tyrion plans to do until then, he just lets Brienne guide him away.

Inside the castle is as awful as the outside, but after crying that much something hollow has settled in its place and the devastation seems almost benign. He steps over the bodies carefully with Brienne as she guides him up, up, up, to a hallway of the castle lying silent and still. She cautiously stops outside a door, pushes it open. The door bumps against a body, and she sullenly pushes harder. The body slides slowly, a fresh and heavy corpse, and she hefts it into the hallway and steps inside.

Jaime follows her. He can't do anything else.

It's funny how, after a day of stepping oddly around each other, he and Brienne are sufficiently exhausted to go to the same quarters without a second thought. He's not got a room in Winterfell anyway, but Brienne had never asked and he had never asked for permission. Brienne bites at her lip and scrambles at a tie on her breastplate, just over her shoulder, one Pod probably has to tie on for her, and Jaime unquestioningly steps forward and does his best to help. He's clumsy at it with one hand but it unties, eventually, and Brienne lets it crash to the ground, no care or decorum. She reaches out to help him and he stands there, some kind of warmth in his chest as she takes it off for him, armour clattering to the ground. He unbuckles his sword, leans it against the same chair she's left hers at. Glances up at Brienne.

She's stood in her clothes, standing like a deer caught in the sights of a crossbow, looking over at him. He frowns at her.

"What?"

"I can't sleep in these," she says.

Jaime frowns some more. "Take them off, then." He certainly is, they're soaked to an inch in blood and viscera, sticking to his skin. He wants to wash, but he doesn't have the energy to find water. He's not sure where he'd even get it right now. He pulls at the ties around his metal hand, drags it off and onto a table. Even in the low light of the morning, he realises it's dripping as he places it down, and he looks down with surprise at his arm, pulls off the cloth he keeps between his stump and his hand. The force of using the hand in battle has had its toll. His arm's bruised all over, the skin has rubbed clean off at the edge of his wrist, split in places, and it's bleeding a surprising amount.

Brienne's at his side almost immediately, hefting a bag to the table, pulling out some linen, and then she's crossing the room to grab a small skin of wine. Jaime sits down tentatively. She inspects his right arm with that little concerned frown she makes where her forehead crumples and a little line appears between her eyebrows. She looks up, disconcerted, and Jaime looks down again. Her hands are strong and wide and deft, but they're shaking as they pour wine across the wounds, Jaime barely reacting to the pain- she cleans it off with a cloth, uncharacteristically gentle taps against his arm, and ties the linen far too loosely around it.

"I won't break," he prompts. Her hands still around the place his hand should be. He looks up, trying a smile, and realises she's shaking, that glazed wide-eye look is back, and it's all he can do to stand up and hold her tight and close as she slowly, awfully, breaks down. She's not sobbing uncontrollably, and for that Jaime's thankful, it would set him off again and then they'd both look like fools, but she's shivering into his chest, curling up small where she stands like she wants to disappear.

She speaks into his shoulder, quieter than he'd ever heard her.

"They died under my command."

He pushes her back and stares into her eyes until she looks at him, really looks at him.

"Not all of them."

"You don't know that."

"Pod isn't dead," Jaime says.

"Mm."

"And I'm not dead."

Brienne's face crumples a little and he can't help the joke, it's right there and he'll try anything to stop her from crying.

"Oh, it's not _so_ terrible that I lived, is it?" He tries, attempting a cocky tone, a light smile. He's pretty sure he lands somewhere between a smile and a grimace, but whatever it is must work because suddenly Brienne is kissing him.

It's not romantic. He's dreamt of romantic, of rough, of everything inbetween, when it comes to Brienne. But he hadn't dreamt of a moment like this, where their lips taste like rot and blood and salt, and the only thing keeping him standing upright is her hand on the small of his back, and it's the worst possible time and place and he wishes they could have had this at any other time but at least they're alive to have it, fuck. She starts to pull back and he clasps the back of her head and pulls her back to him and they're kissing again, and it's no better than the first time but it feels like comfort, at least.

He blinks back and looks at her searchingly, and finds the same gaze looking back.

He'd never bothered to thoroughly investigate his feelings for Brienne. There wasn't much point. Jaime Lannister, knight of the Kingsguard, heir of Casterly Rock, does not get to feel things. Jaime Lannister, Kingslayer, can't afford to feel things. Jaime Lannister, lover of his own twin sister, had long since accepted that there would be no other path in his life. No matter where his thoughts wandered, or what scenarios he could invent between himself and her, or what dreams invaded his mind. It wasn't a reality he could entertain.

But now the dead walked, and he no longer stands in King's Landing, and Brienne is right there, Ser Brienne, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, his commander, staring down at him.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, tries to pull back. Being away from her, her warmth, her crushing gaze, feels like a death sentence right now, and Jaime grabs her tight and pulls himself closer. Her eyes widen.

"If you dare apologise," Jaime starts, before finding that he has no threats or jibes left, and so he just kisses her again and takes her right hand in his left and leads them to the bed. Brienne, for once, doesn't fight him.

There is nothing to do or say tonight. Tonight they take off their clothes and lie together in the bed, and they hold each other until exhaustion commits them to sleep. Tomorrow there will be discussions to have and decisions to make and bodies to bury, but for tonight they sleep with a corpse outside the door and blood in their hair, entangled in each other, alive.


End file.
